After some experimenting I made my own mandala. Using some iron wire and a little bit of time and patience it wasn’t even that hard. The mandala I had bought was pretty small (about 10cm). The version I made myself was around double the size (20cm) because the bigger size made it easier to manipulate the wires.

Needed:

Two big pieces of iron wire of around 20cm. Make sure the wire is not to thick to easily bend but also not to thin.

36 smaller pieces of iron wire of about 6 cm

Pliers

Few pieces of rope

Preparation:

Bend the ends of all the iron wires, so you can hook it onto another wire

Execution:

Hook the final parts of the long pieces of iron wire together so you get two separate circles of iron wire. Use the pliers to close the ends so you cannot break the circle.

On each big circle you need to hook 9 little pieces of wire pointing upwards and 9 pointing downwards. Use the pliers to close the ends so that the small wires are fixed to the circle on one side.

Now for the hard part. Bend the small wires one by one and bend them over the base of the next wire. The last wire needs to be bend and connected over the first wire, so stretch the wires to cover the entire circle. Use the pliers to close the ends and connect all the wires to the circle.

Connect the two parts you have with the pieces of rope. You need 9 pieces of rope to connect one side of a circle to one side of the other circle.

Possible improvements:

Replace the little pieces of rope by small beads. This requires you to connect the beads before you fix the small iron wires. This means you are connecting the two parts right from the start of this project, and will make it a bit more complex.

2600 years ago the Tibetan monks were already playing with this toy. A mandala. It is a little toy made from some iron wire and some beads that you can fold in a lot of different shapes.

According to the accompanying note the various shapes represent the sun, the heaven, the oceans, the universe, good and evil, an explosion and the nothingness. Playing with the Mandala every now and then helps you heal your spirit.

Lets see if these harmonious movements and deep symbolism have their effect on me.